BY ZAK STOREY
This issue, we reached out to Kelly Joeman, Senior Manager of Audience Development atOne Animation, to learn about third-culture kids, and how she developed her Instagramplatform into a thriving educational community for ex-pats, migrants and others.Third Culture Kids
& The Internet
Maximum PC talks all things TCK & Social MediaMaximum PC:
Hi Kelly, thanks for joining
us! So, to start out, could you
explain a bit about yourself,
who you are, what do you do?Kelly Joeman: Sure! I’m
Kelly and I’m a senior manager
of audience development for
One Animation. I manage the
digital platforms for kids’
shows, I run YouTube chanels
for different brands and I’ve
recently moved to Singapore,
which has been quite a big
transition for me.MPC: What is a TCK? Can you
explain what that is? Is it just
another name for an ex-pat, or
is it more in-depth than that?Kelly: So, basically, a
third-culture kid is an
individual who has grown up
amongst different countries
or spent a significant part of
their developmental years
growing up in countries and
cultures other than that of
their parents’ culture or their
passport culture. The term has
expanded recently because
there has been an increase
in social mobility and moving
around the world. Of course,
that means cultures are
coming together and so you get
more cultural mixing.The larger umbrella
term now is ‘cross-cultural
kids’, and that encompasses
groups such as migrants,
children of migrants, or ex-
pats—you know, multilingual,
multiracial, and everything in
between. Essentially, third-
culture kids are kind of part
of that bracket, so the term is
quite complex.
I like to visualize it as a sort
of Venn Diagram. Basically, you
have your first culture, which
is sort of your home culture,
and then your second culture,
which is the host culture—
that’s the culture of the place
that you have been brought
up in. And then the third
culture is this more abstract
thing, like a culture of shared
commonalities that people
have when they’re mixing.MPC: Interesting, so can you
give us a bit of background into
your upbringing? Basically,
what makes you a TCK?Kelly: I’m half English and
half Malaysian, and I grew up
in both. I moved to Malaysia
when I was nine and I did
some school there, I did a bit
of primary and a bit of high
school there, and then I moved
back to the UK when I was 18 to
study at college and university.I spent a significant part of
my developmental years in
Malaysia, a country that has
some quite different customs
and cultures compared with
the UK. So my experience of
culture is very much a hybrid
and I associate or construct my
identity with different parts of
both those things.
Also because I went to an
International School out in
Malaysia and met loads of
different people from all over
the world, that helped to shape
me as well, because it really
depends on the types of people
you’re mixed with, essentially.
And yeah the cultures all just
kind of get smashed together,
which is great.MPC: Something we’ve seen
a lot in our research is this
big question of what exactly
‘home’ means individually to
a TCK? Can you explain how
that’s different compared to
say someone who’s born and
raised in the USA?Kelly: Basically, ‘home’ is
kind of an abstract concept
if you think about it, because
your identity is closely related
to where you think of as home.
But with a third culture kid, if
they’ve moved around quite
a lot, then they don’t haveKelly Joeman has
worked across
multiple YouTube
brand channels
over the years,
and is also a
champion of the
TCK community on
Instagram.12 MAXIMUMPC HOL 2021
quickstart